"If there ever be one so fortunate," she mused. Suddenly her mood changed. A new kind of despair came into her lovely eyes, a plaintive note into her voice. (I may be pardoned for declaring that she became, in the twinkling of an eye, a real flesh and blood woman.) "I don't know what I shall do unless I can get something to wear, Mr. Barnes. I haven't a thing, you see. This suit is--well, you can see what it is.

I--"

"I've never seen a more attractive suit," he p.r.o.nounced. "I said as much to myself the first time I saw it, the other evening at the cross-roads. It fits--"

"But I cannot LIVE in it, you know. My boxes are up at Green Fancy,--two small ones for steamer use. Everything I have in the world is in them. Pray do not look so forlorn. You really couldn't have carried them, Mr. Barnes, and I shudder when I think of what would have happened to you if I had tumbled them out of the window upon your head.

You would have been squashed, and it isn't unlikely that you would have aroused every one in the house with your groans and curses."

"I dropped a trunk on my toes one time," he said, grinning with a delight that had nothing to do with the reminiscence. She was quaintly humorous once more, and he was happy. "I think one swears more prodigiously when a trunk falls on his toes than he does when it drops on his head. There is something wonderfully quieting and soothing about a trunk lighting on one's head from a great height. Don't worry about your boxes. I have a feeling it will be perfectly safe to call for them with a wagon to-morrow."

"I don't know what I should do without you," she said.

That evening at supper, Barnes and Mr. Rushcroft, to say nothing of three or four "transients," had great cause for complaint about the service. Miss Tilly was wholly pre-occupied. She was memorising her "part." Instead of asking Mr. Rushcroft whether he would have bean soup or noodles, she wanted to know whether she should speak the line this way or that. She had a faraway, strained look in her eyes, and she mumbled so incessantly that one of the guests got up and went out to see Mr. Jones about it. Being a.s.sured that she was just a plain d.a.m.n'

fool and not crazy, he returned and said a great many unpleasant things in the presence of Miss Tilly, who fortunately did not hear them.

"You've spoiled a very good waitress, Rushcroft," said Barnes.

"And a very good appet.i.te as well," growled the Star.

Late in the night, Barnes, sitting at his window dreaming dreams, saw two big touring cars whiz past the tavern. The next morning Peter Ames, the chauffeur, called him up on the telephone to inquire whether he had heard anything more about the job on his sister's place. He was anxious to know, he said, because everybody had cleared out of Green Fancy during the night and he had received instructions to lock up the house and look for another situation.

CHAPTER XVIII

MR. SPROUSE CONTINUES TO BE PERPLEXING, BUT PUTS HIS NOSE TO THE GROUND

The morning air was soft with the first real touch of spring. A quiet haze lay over the valley; the lofty hills were enjoying a peaceful smoke, and the sky was as blue as the turquoise. Birds shrilled a fresh, gay carol; the song of the anvil had a new thrill of joy in every inspiring note; the cawing of crows travelled melodiously across the fields, roosters split their throats in vociferous acclaim to the distant sun, and hens clucked a complacent chorus. The rattle of kitchen pans was melody to the ear instead of torture; the squeaking of pigs in the sty beyond the stable yard took on the dignity of music; and the blue smoke that rose from chimneys near and far went dancing up to wed the smiling sky.

Barnes was abroad early. Very greatly to his annoyance, he had slept long and soundly throughout the night. He was annoyed because he had made up his mind that as her protector he would be most negligent if he went to sleep at all, with all those frightened varlets hovering around ready to go to any extreme in order to save their skins.

Indeed, he left his door slightly ajar and laid his revolver on a chair beside the bed, in which, with the aid of a lantern, he promised himself to keep the vigil, stretched out in his daytime garb, prepared for instant action, the while he enriched his mind by reading "The Man of Property." But he fell to dreaming with his eyes wide open, and few were the pages he turned.

Suddenly it was broad daylight and the wick in the lantern smelled horribly. He popped from the bed, rubbed his eyes, and then dashed out in the hall, expecting to come upon sanguinary evidence of a raid during the night. To his amazement, there were no visible signs of an attack upon the house. It seemed incredible that his defection had not been attended by results too horrible to contemplate. By all the laws of fate, she should now be either dead or at the very least, frightfully mutilated. Something like that invariably happens when a sentinel sleeps at his post, or an engineer drowses in his cab. But nothing of the sort had happened.

Mr. Bacon, sweeping the front stairs, a.s.sured him between yawns that he hadn't heard a sound in the Tavern after half-past ten,--at which hour he went to bed and to sleep.

Barnes was at breakfast when Peter Ames called up. An inspiration seized him when the chauffeur mentioned the wholesale exodus: he hired Peter forthwith and ordered him to report immediately,--with the car.

He was going up to Green Fancy for Miss Cameron's "boxes."

Whether it was the fresh, sweet smell of the earth that caused him to saunter forth from the Tavern, and to adventure across the road to the foot of the great old oak, or the ripening of spring in his blood, is of no immediate consequence here. He had no reason for going over there to lean against the tree and light his after-breakfast pipe,--unless, of course, it be argued that the position afforded a fair and excellent view of the window in Miss Cameron's room. The shutters were open and the low sash was raised.

Presently she appeared at the window, and smiled down upon him. The spell was at its height; the charm that had clothed the morning with enchantment was now complete.

He waved his hand. "The top o' the morning," he cried.

"I detect coffee," she returned, "and, oh, how good it smells. Have you had yours?"

"Ages ago," he replied, ecstatically.

She placed her elbows on the sill and her chin in the palms of her hands. The loose sleeves of Miss Thackeray's bizarre dressing gown fell away, revealing two round, smooth, white arms. The sun shot its mellow light into the ripples of her tousled hair, and it shone like burnished gold. Her white teeth gleamed against the red of her smiling lips. He was fascinated.

The automobile driven by Peter Ames too soon came roaring and rattling up the pike. She withdrew her head, after twice being warned by Barnes not to reveal herself to the view of skulkers who might infest the wood beyond,--and each time his reward was a delightfully stubborn shake of the head and the ruthless a.s.sertion that on such a heavenly morning as this she didn't mind in the least if all the spies in the world were gazing at her.

Two minutes after Peter drove up to the Tavern he was on the way back to Green Fancy again, and seated beside him was Thomas Kingsbury Barnes, his new master.

"Needn't be afraid of trespa.s.sin'," said Peter when Barnes advised him to go slow as they turned off the road into the forest. "n.o.body's going to object. You c'n yell, and shoot, and raise all the thunder you want, an' there won't be n.o.body runnin' out to tell you to shut up. Might as well try to disturb a graveyard."

There was not a sign of human life about the place. Peter, without compunction, admitted his employer through the back door of the house, and accompanied him upstairs to the room recently occupied by Miss Cameron.

"Course," he said, but not uneasily, "I'm not supposed to let anybody remove anything from the house as long as I'm employed as caretaker."

"But you are no longer employed as caretaker. You were discharged and you are now working for me, Peter."

"That's so," said Peter, scratching his head. "Makes all the difference in the world. I never thought of that. Come to think of it, I guess Miss Cameron needs clothes as much as anybody. The rest of 'em took all their duds away with 'em, you c'n bet. Would you know Miss Cameron's clothes if you was to see 'em?"

"Perfectly," said Barnes.

"That's good," said Peter, relieved. "Clothes seem to look purty much alike to me, specially women's."

They found the two small leather trunks, thickly belabelled, in the room upstairs. Both were locked.

"I don't see how you're going to identify 'em without seein' 'em," said Peter dubiously.

Barnes looked at him sternly. "Peter, be good enough to remember that you are working for a man of the most highly developed powers of divination. Do you get that?"

"No, sir," said Peter honestly; "I don't."

"Well, if I were to say to you that I possess the singular ability to see a thing without actually seeing it, what would you say?"

"I wouldn't say anything, because I don't think it helps a man any to call his boss a liar."

"You take this one," said Barnes, without further parley, "and I will manage the other." He was in a hurry to get away from the house. There was no telling when the government agents would descend upon the place.

He was at a loss to understand O'Dowd's failure to remove the trunks which would so surely draw the attention of the authorities to the girl he seemed so eager to shield. "And, by the way," he added, as they descended the stairs with the trunks on their backs, "you may as well get your own things together, Peter. We start on a long motor trip to-night. I am afraid we shall have to steal the automobile, if you don't mind."

"It belongs to me, sir," said Peter. "Mr. O'Dowd gave it to me yesterday, with his compliments. It seems that he had word from his sister to reward me for long and faithful service. Special cablegram from London or England, I forget which."

"Did Mr. Curtis leave with the others last night?" inquired Barnes, setting the trunk down on the brick pavement outside the door.

"'Pears that he left a couple of days ago," said Peter, vastly perplexed. "By gosh, I don't see how he done it, 'thout me knowin'

anything about it. Derned queer, that's all I got to say, man as sick as he is."

Barnes did not enlighten him. He helped Peter to lift the trunks into the car and then ordered him to start at once for Hart's Tavern.

"You can return later on for your things," he said.

"I got 'em tied up in a bundle in the garage, Mr. Burns," he said.